Greater Salem Technology Equity Project

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Morningside Methodist Computer Lab

We are finished with the Morningside Methodist Computer Lab project! Just in time, we received requests for two more local computer lab projects. There is definitely a large demand for just the few services we provide already (technology grants and computer lab installations), let alone the services we will provide when we are fully operational:

Project Story

Our job was to give Morningside Methodist’s Community Connections Program a functional public computer lab. The lab will offer computer resources to the surrounding community (much of which is low-income) at little or no cost.

First, our job was to look at what we were working with. The room was quite a mess.

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After a bit of cleanup thanks to the volunteers at the church, we were able to get to the hardware and assess:

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It was all over the place! Fortunately, we just got a donation of several slim form-factor desktop systems that provided great, uniform-looking replacements. We took the old/non-functional computers off their hands, or they recycled them through NextStep Recycling and swapped them out for the donated systems.

One of the church volunteers, Fred, converted it into a standing desk with a high stool to allow standing or sitting. Cool! This computer acts as the print server, and gives every computer in the lab access to the laser printer:

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The network was running at a crawl. Something wasn’t right — it would have taken months to complete the project at such slow speeds, and the lab would be unusable as an internet gateway. We looked into router, and a simple firmware upgrade did the trick! I’ve encountered this issue so many times…!

The bigger task was getting all seven computers up and running. For that, we created setup procedures based on our standard process (see below) and went about installing the hardware and software. Lubuntu lets us turn old computers into modern, functional ones:

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The finished computers…

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A happy Community Connections Coordinator at her standing desk (she says, “Thanks Fred!”)

A two-month project and a great learning experience!

Lab setup procedures

client setup process:

Do NOT “update installer” — for some reason it has failed to proceed after trying this option